With the last week more or less spent half-delirious on the couch I wasn't up to much. Reading was out of the question because I couldn't concentrate well enough, so I watched TV a whole lot and made another foray into modular origami. With my disastrous attempts at fröbeling and the more successful attempts at the bascetta star (video tutorial here) I branched out. I don't like the look of the modules needed for the bascetta star, they do wind up looking untidy and jagged. They're the blue and orange things on the photo.

My attempts with the sonobe module (video tutorial here) were successful, too, but the result looks far more like a ball than a star, so it's not really Christmas decoration. It's also not as see-through that I had hoped. On the picture, it's the grey item in the background.

I think at the moment my favourites are the fairly easy omega stars (video tutorial), they're the small orange and yellow ones on the picture, which unfortunately also wind up looking rather untidy and they always tear in the corners when I try to fold them over. The tutorial makes it look really easy to end up with far superior, tidier, pointier stars, but I didn't manage.



Edit: I found a less messy module than the one used in the Bascetta star that can be used to make a dodecahedral star (video tutorial here):



Brought to you by the two piles of student papers that I had to ignore all of last week and that is too forbidding to scale now. I really like this module, though, and I think this could probably be used to make other stellated polyhedra.

EDIT II: Send help. Here's another icosahedral star following a design and using the modules by Francesco Mancini (video tutorial here).



Oh, the work? Um. Yes, the work. The mountain is slowly getting smaller, but I can't believe how much work has piled up. I returned to school to a completely filled pigeon hole with work students handed in last Friday, and since I missed three tests with all of my small classes I spent the Friday afternoon correcting those. They're actually quite fast, but altogether I still took three hours.

I don't have a very high degree of literacy when it comes to animated media, but this video I found via the Hathor Legacy still made interesting points with regards to prototypical (usually male) characters in animated media and their female token counterpart(s). Tread carefully, it does have issues.

I discovered this in this review of Precious, the movie based on Sapphire's novel Push (which is excellent, but I haven't found the time to review it yet) and just wanted to share, because it is hilarious and reminded me of rather too many movies I watched in the past:

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

I don't remember crying when I heard a song, ever, but this probably comes closest.

English: this probably comes closest because I used to watch and love that movie when I was five.




German:


Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

I found this on YouTube yesterday. It's a parody of the movie written and produced by what appear to be a bunch of Highschool students. Some of the jokes are ... well, unfunny (child molestation! LOL!), and it's sadly not complete yet, but the parts they do have are pretty impressive nonetheless.

angie_21_237 , in case you're watching this, do you also think that the Mike Newton in this one somehow reminds you of someone from our year?



( Twilight the Musical )

Via sf_drama . That community is full of win sometimes.

The eight "equally important" parts of  how thinness and happiness can be achieved:

1. Honesty
2. Physical appearance
3. Exercise
4. Mindset
5. Sex
6. Food
7. Men
8. Faith

Something nice for a change: I usually only whine about this city, but finally, I found something that I love about this city: it has may bugs!!
Yay, may bugs!


I saw the first ones today on my way to my appointment with my GP and rescued two from the street and put them back between some shrubs in the park. I hope they don't get stepped on.

I love, love, love these beetles, and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I don't live in a time in which they are so numerous that they they threaten our harvests or sad that they are so rare that when I saw one of them today I stopped and watched it until it has waggled out of sight, trying to remember when I've last seen one - which was back in the late nineties, and even back then my mother called me to show it to me because it was such a rare sight.

Also, I found 'Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr'  on YouTube - ah, childhood memories - and pest control wank in the comments. Seriously, Reinhard Mey fans, I would have thought you were above that. o_O.

In a part of the mines without dwarven (architectural) remains, that is. I also love how they seem to have used the exact filter set the guys who did the Twilight movie used just to ram home the fact that the story of this movie is really Serious Business, and serious business requires an excess of blues and grey rather than pinks and yellows, apparently. I liked movies which are able to create this effect without filters, but tastes differ.

So, we watched the newish Harry Potter trailer this morning and while there are many things in there that I really like, there are also things that I did not enjoy, unsurprisingly. One was the gollum-inferi and the interior of the cave. Maybe there is not much creative leeway with caves.

( In case you're worried about spoilers )

Also, while I am quite weary of the changes they made, I am looking forward to this movie because in spite of the gratuitous filter use (look at those colours!) it is so stunningly pretty. Adaptation-wise I doubt that these people's assessment of the movie is wrong, though - concentration of romance and changes to the ending sound exactly like what I would have expected. The spoilers of the movie found here and here also don't really make me that exited about this.


( More trailer stills and thoughts )

Right. Back to different concepts of performativity and mediality.

... is my rockstar.

Even though Orlando di Lasso seems to be the superstar of early polyphony around here and get most of the credit because of his versatility (at least going by the curriculum of a course on the period offered in Crocky's uni a few semesters back), I prefer Palestrina's works at the moment, or at least what I know of it. Which is not much, just the Missa nigra sum, the Missa Sicut lilium inter spinas and the Missa benedicta es.

Other than that: these days, I often feel half of the brink of panic attacks that that never come. I hope it's because I am being a good girl, get enough sleep and drink and exercise (not enough of that, though, maybe), and not because I don't have the deadline for my thesis yet. Still. Excessive baking is hardly effective therapy for stress-relief (especially considering my weight-loss goals, damn you, cheesecake, be cursed, breakfast rolls), and stress relaxation methods won't help forever. I think I need to see someone here, I need some help with getting through my oral exams at the end of the year without blackouts. I heard that there are weekend courses for exam anxiety over here, I think I'll look into that.

I'll be doing an oral report on Scots in a seminar on the varieties of English after Christmas, and I am thinking about using this example to introduce what the video says is the Tayside accent:

There are a surprising number of eager Scots who have uploaded guides to their accent or lessons (such as Learn Scottish with The Hedrons, or John's Scots Language Primer), and there's also a group of people who are doing recordings in Scots - like the group of people who are uploading the Bible in Scots.

Here's Psalm 23:

I really miss this accent.